11. Everett
CHAPTER 11
EVERETT
T urned out feeling righteous about something wasn’t a substitute for feeling good about it.
Did I feel pretty righteous about insisting that we pursue what had happened to Ricky even though the cops clearly didn’t want to address it? Yes. Did I feel righteous about standing up to Colin on that? Yep. Did either of these moments make it okay for me to be angry at Kyle for trying to walk the line between getting along with his brother and getting along with me?
Not really.
I could act stupid sometimes, but I wasn’t actually stupid, no matter what my teachers and family and…well, numerous people thought of me. I understood context. I knew that not every situation was cut and dry, and that of course it made sense to want to protect the people closest to you in a dangerous job—and I was under no illusions that being a cop couldn’t be a dangerous job. I’d picked up the bodies of two cops since I started working for my dad, and both of them had died in the line of duty. It wasn’t easy work. I knew that.
That didn’t make it okay for them to ignore a murder just because the victim seemed forgettable, or someone in power wanted them forgotten.
It also didn’t make it okay for me to be a little jerk to the guy whose fish I was falling in love with.
Fine. Not the fish. Steve and his tankmates were just a bonus. I was maybe possibly kind of falling for Kyle, something I might as well own up to because I couldn’t lie for shit and definitely not to myself. And I’d gone and told him off. Told off the guy who was the only other person prepared to really do anything about this case, who’d convinced his cop brother to look into it even when it was clear he didn’t want to.
Welp. That was pretty unkind of me. There were a lot of other words I could use to describe my mistake, including numerous four-letter ones, but my mom had made it a point to remind all of us to be gentle with ourselves when we could. She’d never raised a hand to us, or her voice. She hadn’t had to—my mother had been one of those people with her own gravitational pull, who tugged you into her orbit and made you better just by keeping you close for a while. I hadn’t inherited her ability to do that, and it was too late to ask her for lessons, but maybe it wasn’t too late for me to make amends.
I’d left in such a fucking huff, though. And it had already been more than a full day, and neither of us had reached out. I worried that Kyle might not think I was being genuine if I just called him up and apologized for being a dick at this point. How did someone apologize for being a dick? I decided to talk to my brother about it, since he was the biggest dick I knew and yet he’d somehow managed to keep a girlfriend for a while now.
I found him tinkering with the engine on the second hearse in the back. Stuart was an inveterate tinkerer—there was always a little more efficiency he could wring out of an engine, or a little more grease to add, or take away, or… Honestly, I didn’t know what the hell he did most of the time. It just looked like bang-twist-turn-pull-swear to me, but it seemed to work for him.
“Hey Stuart?”
“Mm?” He glanced up at me. “Where’s my coffee?”
“Excuse me?”
“Coffee.” He motioned to the cup in my hands. “You made fresh coffee and you didn’t bring me some?”
I stared at him, baffled the way I often seemed to be when talking to my brother. “You didn’t ask for any.”
“I shouldn’t have to ask for coffee.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Coffee is life! And I’m taking that John Doe on an eight-hour car ride to another state this afternoon, so I need to be fortified.”
I pulled my coffee away from his grabby, greasy hand. “That’s not what I’m here about. I want to talk to you about Penny.”
Stuart’s look went from snarky to spooked in a second. “Oh shit. Did you find it?”
“Find wha?—”
He gripped the front of my shirt, smearing engine grease on the polo fabric. I would have objected, but I’d never seen quite this level of panic in his eyes before.
“Did you say something to her? You didn’t say anything to her, did you? Shit, shit, I knew I should have hidden it better but I didn’t think—and I already told her to—and I?—”
“Dude!” I grabbed his shoulders. “Is this about your mecha porn?”
He blinked at me. “Fuck, you know about that too?”
“I mean, you don’t actually go out of your way to hide it, but?—”
Stuart shook his head. “Never mind. No, this is about the engagement ring! I hid it in your room so Penny wouldn’t find it when she came over. You’ve got so many layers of crap in there that I figured it would take years for anyone to unearth it, but if you randomly decided to excavate one of your piles of papers and found it, I figured you might mention it to Penny since the bag has her name on it.”
“It does?” Confusion turned into excitement. “Wait, holy shit, you’re planning on proposing to Penny?”
“Keep your voice down,” Stuart muttered, finally letting go of me. “I don’t want Leanne to hear.”
“She would be happy for you,” I said.
My brother laughed in a not-so-funny way. “Not right now she wouldn’t. Not after what happened with her and Theo.”
“Oh. Right.” Yeah, with a newly broken engagement, she might not take that so well. “Good point.”
“Yeah. Plus…” My brother went to scratch his head, then thought better of it after glancing at his hands. “It’s—look, can you keep a secret?”
“Um…”
“Yeah, stupid question.” He shook his head and turned back to the hearse. Just a week ago, I might have agreed with Stuart that I was in fact terrible at keeping secrets, but that was something I’d learned about myself, thanks to looking into Ricky’s death. I could keep a secret if the stakes were high enough, and given what Colin had said…they might be even higher than I knew.
“I can.”
Stuart glanced at me. “Right. You?—”
“I can,” I said firmly. “Talk to me. I won’t say anything to anyone else.”
He took a longer look at me. “Uh…okay. Fine, but I’m serious, you can not say anything to anyone else yet.”
“Deal.” I waited patiently—well, not super patiently but as patient as I could be when I was desperately curious—while my brother closed the hood, wiped his hands, started to pace… I was about to tell him not to stress about it when he finally snapped.
“I’m planning on leaving the business.”
Oh. That was…wow. That was not what I’d been expecting him to say. I was so stunned I literally couldn’t speak, which was good because once Stuart got started he just kept going.
“I want to start an interstate courier service. Well, actually, I want to open a franchise. The buy-in is pretty low, and I’ve already got a lot of work lined up. I just—I’m done moving bodies, Ev. It freaks Penny out. I know Dad’s been hoping she’d work for us as a marketing person, and for a while I hoped that too, but she just can’t handle the dead people and I don’t blame her. She won’t marry me if I don’t have something else lined up, and I really love her. Besides, I’m ready for something new.” He sighed. “I’ve been driving for Dad since I got my license. I’m ready to go to work for myself.”
“Damn.” That was all I could say at first, but luckily it came out more enthusiastic than accusatory. “That’s…that’s so exciting! Holy crap, you’ll be great at that!”
My brother gave me the biggest smile I think I’d ever seen from him. “You think so?”
“Yeah! And of course Penny, I mean, she’s awesome. Way too cool for you, but I guess she likes car nerds, so?—”
He punched my shoulder. “Shut up. But…really? You think she’ll say yes?”
I shrugged. “Why wouldn’t she?”
“I don’t know, I guess…we’re kind of a codependent family. Even with me moving out, I can’t imagine not seeing you and Leanne and Dad all the time.”
“It’s not a bad thing to like your family.” On the contrary, it was sad if you didn’t like your family. I thought of Kyle, tense and pale while he talked to his brother, the way he spoke about his dad and the rest of his cop-heavy relatives, and wondered how long it had been since he’d hung out with most of them. Maybe a long time. Maybe years.
I felt like more of a heel than ever.
We talked a little but more about Stuart’s plans—he could run the business out of a garage for starters, which was good because he was planning on moving into Penny’s place once they were engaged if she said yes. Which she would, I was pretty sure. She really did love him.
It was nice to know that my brother was happy, but weird to know he was going away. “Was it just Penny that made you decide to stop working here?” I asked as we sat side by side on the hearse’s bumper, coffees in hand. “Or is there more to it?”
Stuart stared at his cup for a moment before he said, “I never really wanted to work for Dad. I agreed to it at first because it was right after Mom passed and he was losing it. You might not remember how much he was drinking, but I’m pretty sure the business would have fallen down around his ears if Leanne and I hadn’t been covering for him. You were still a minor, and if we’d taken off, the state probably would have taken you, so…yeah. I went to work instead of to trade school.”
He took a sip. “And I don’t regret it,” he continued, “because I don’t mind the work and I love our family, and if I’d gone away somewhere to school I wouldn’t have met Penny, but I can’t do it forever. At some point my dreams have to come first, or I lose them. Shit, look at our sister.”
I didn’t want to look at Leanne too closely. She was still a mess, which was totally understandable, but we were all walking on eggshells around her. I didn’t know exactly what dreams she’d given up on, but I did know that I didn’t want to have that depth of sadness in my life if I could prevent it.
All of this was a weird, roundabout way of my brain deciding that I needed to not be a fucking jerk to Kyle. It wasn’t the same, I got that—my sister had been with Theo for almost seven years, and Stuart had been with Penny for two. I’d been on two cleaning jobs with Kyle, fed his piranhas once, and gone out to eat with him twice. Three times if you counted the bar, which really shouldn’t count probably, since we hadn’t had anything to eat or drink since we’d been kind of focused on our meeting with a drug dealer, but still. We’d only had a few dates—well, “dates”— but Kyle was great. Super smart. Funny. Hard-working—he owned his own successful business already, that was so impressive, and he’d done it without his family’s support.
All he had were two cats, seven piranhas, and the godly powers of caffeine.
“How should I apologize for being a jerk to someone?” I asked my brother.
He snorted. “Oh, are you going to be apologizing for that now?”
“I’m never a jerk to you!”
“You used up my shaving cream just last week without buying more.”
“You used mine first!”
“Bullshit!”
“You did , you?—”
“Boys.” We both turned around to see Dad standing in the door leading to the garage. He had his work suit on, and a particularly grim demeanor that informed us he wasn’t happy to be standing there right now. “We have two funerals to get through this afternoon,” he snapped in a low voice. “Leanne’s not able to host, so it’s time for you to step up. Everett, you’re on greeting duty, so I want you by the front door in ten minutes. Stuart, there are flower arrangements to be picked up at Plume and Feather in half an hour, so you better have that car in working order.”
“Plume and Feather delivers,” my brother pointed out.
“Not when it means we get to keep an extra ten percent of the fee, they don’t.” He pointed at the car. “Now get moving. Flowers are for the Rodriguez family; the Smiths are bringing their own.”
Stuart pressed his lips together until they blanched, but nodded. “I’m on it.”
“And Everett.” My dad shook his head as he looked more closely at me. “Jesus Christ, change your shirt already. Why do you even try to help your brother if you’re not gonna stay clean? That’s no way to represent the family business.”
No, it wasn’t. That was why I had twelve, count ‘em, twelve spares in my room. But no matter how many times I’d proven that I could, in fact, dress myself and put a good face on for the job, Dad felt the need to keep reminding me. Maybe I really was that unreliable. Kyle probably thought so, after what I’d done with him. He probably thought he was in it all on his own now. He probably thought I was a?—
“Everett! Answer me when I ask you a question!”
But you didn’t ask me a question! I knew what he meant, though. I gave him a thumbs up and a fake smile. “Clean shirt, ten minutes. Got it.”
“Good, good.” He headed back inside, leaving my spirit feeling as deflated as an old tire. I sighed heavily and began to follow him, but a tug on my arm turned me back toward my brother.
“Is it a romantic apology?” Stuart asked.
I blinked at my brother. “What?”
“The person you want to apologize to. Is it a romantic apology? Like, is this someone through work, or is it someone you want to really impress?”
“Um.” I was tempted to say “both” but when it came right down to it… “Romantic. I really like him, but I jumped to some conclusions and was kind of rude and now I’m afraid he might think I’m an asshole.”
My brother nodded sagely. “Instead of just thinking about your asshole, I get it.”
“Oh my God, shut up.”
“Hey, do you want my help?”
I nodded, because screw him, but I did.
“Then listen to me. An apology is only as good as the effort you put into it. Saying sorry for something big isn’t enough. You need to prove you’ve thought about the best way to show him you appreciate him too. Get him his favorite food, flowers if he’s into that—hey, are guys into that?”
I stared at my brother. “Dude. You are a guy.”
“Yeah, but I’m not gay.”
“Does that matter when it comes to flowers? You steal the leftover arrangements all the time.”
“To give to Penny,” he said defensively, then added, “Plus the smell of gardenias reminds me of Mom. Whatever, anyway. Do something specifically nice for him, hand it over without expectation of immediate forgiveness, and be sincere. It’s the triple-threat approach to apologizing.”
“Very strategic.”
“Fuck yeah, it is.” He glanced at his phone. “You’ve only got five minutes left to change.”
Shit.
Two services later, I’d had plenty of time to think about how to apologize to Kyle. I went with food—I already knew he liked apple pie, so I splurged and bought a whole one from Waffles? that, if I was lucky, he would share with me. I thought about flowers, then maybe about a new plant for the piranhas, but they had a lot of plants already and I didn’t want the cats to feel neglected, so I went with fresh cat grass instead. Then I drove over to Kyle’s house, saw the black windows and missing truck, and realized I hadn’t even called ahead to let him know I was coming over.
Wow. Your methods are lacking today, man.
Kyle was probably working, and if so I didn’t want to interrupt him, so I decided to wait for him to come home. I got really hungry after the first hour but resisted digging into the apple pie. I could not nibble on his apology pie; that would be the worst apology ever.
It was past eleven by the time he got back, coming to a slow stop in his driveway. He got out and headed for the door, then did a doubletake and turned back toward me. “What the…Everett?”
Was it normal for my stomach to feel this unsettled? Maybe I was coming down with something.
Like nerves, dumbass.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted as I grabbed my offerings and walked over to him. “I was a dick. I know you’re doing the best with this case that you can, and you’re the only other person who believes that Ricky deserves justice, and I don’t want you to think I’ll leave you to figure it all out alone even if it means putting up with your family, so I got you apple pie from Waffles? and some cat grass.” I held them both out, waiting to see what Kyle would do next.
He was still for about ten seconds, like stock-still, not reaching for the stuff or rejecting it out-of-hand. Right as I began to think this had all gone terribly wrong, he started to laugh. Like, laugh hard , the gut-clenching, diaphragm-quivering kind of laugh most people were too self-conscious to do in public.
“ Cat grass? ” he gasped through his giggles. “Cat grass, oh my God, that’s perfect.”
Nice, he must have just run out. Go figure, my brother had been right about something.
“You’re perfect,” he went on, and ha , that was blatantly untrue, but I guess it meant he forgave me.
“How long have you been waiting here?’ Kyle asked as he straightened up.
“I don’t know, just a few hours.” Three and a half, but that was fine.
“Hours. Wow.” He reached out and took the pie, letting his fingers brush mine. “Do you want to come in for something to eat?”
I could feel my metaphorical ears go up. “Pie?”
“Pie, yeah. I even have some ice cream in the fridge.”
“You’re the perfect one,” I told him very seriously. “And I really am sorry.” I hated to ruin a nice moment with a negative reference, but… “Have you heard from your brother yet?”
His face fell a bit. “Not yet. Probably not for another few days. This shit takes forever.”
“But that pie won’t wait,” I said suggestively, putting the other issue aside for now. “And neither will this cat grass, honestly; it’s already looking a little wilty.”
“We can’t have that.” He opened his door slowly, brushed a cat away with his foot—probably Patches, since she struck me as the type that might make a break for it—and said, “Come in.”
Apology success. I was going to have to do something nice for Stuart for this.